Mark 1:7

1:7 He proclaimed, ¹  “One more powerful than I am is coming after me; I am not worthy ²  to bend down and untie the strap ³  of his sandals.

Mark 2:21

2:21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse.

Mark 4:15

4:15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: Whenever they hear, immediately Satan ⁴  comes and snatches the word ⁵  that was sown in them.

Mark 9:50

9:50 Salt ⁶  is good, but if it loses its saltiness, ⁷  how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

¹ tn Grk “proclaimed, saying.” The participle λέγων (legwn) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

² tn Grk “of whom I am not worthy.”

³ tn The term refers to the leather strap or thong used to bind a sandal. This is often viewed as a collective singular and translated as a plural, “the straps of his sandals,” but it may be more emphatic to retain the singular here.

⁴ sn Interestingly, the synoptic parallels each use a different word for Satan here: Matt 13:19 has “the evil one,” while Luke 8:12 has “the devil.” This illustrates the fluidity of the gospel tradition in often using synonyms at the same point of the parallel tradition.

⁵ sn The word of Jesus has the potential to save if it germinates in a person’s heart, something the devil is very much against.

⁷ sn Salt was used as seasoning or fertilizer (BDAG 41 s.v. ἅλας a), or as a preservative. If salt ceased to be useful, it was thrown away. With this illustration Jesus warned about a disciple who ceased to follow him.

⁸ sn The difficulty of this saying is understanding how salt could lose its saltiness since its chemical properties cannot change. It is thus often assumed that Jesus was referring to chemically impure salt, perhaps a natural salt which, when exposed to the elements, had all the genuine salt leached out, leaving only the sediment or impurities behind. Others have suggested the background of the saying is the use of salt blocks by Arab bakers to line the floor of their ovens: Under the intense heat these blocks would eventually crystallize and undergo a change in chemical composition, finally being thrown out as unserviceable. A saying in the Talmud (b. Bekhorot 8b) attributed to R. Joshua ben Chananja (ca. a.d. 90), when asked the question “When salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again?” is said to have replied, “By salting it with the afterbirth of a mule.” He was then asked, “Then does the mule (being sterile) bear young?” to which he replied: “Can salt lose its flavor?” The point appears to be both are impossible. The saying, while admittedly late, suggests that culturally the loss of flavor by salt was regarded as an impossibility. Genuine salt can never lose its flavor. In this case the saying by Jesus here may be similar to Matt 19:24, where it is likewise impossible for the camel to go through the eye of a sewing needle.